2. Scrum Tips for Managers

In a previous Coopers blog post we spoke to the scrum expert and Managing Director of progile.ch Tobias Müller about his view on putting the right people in the right scrum roles. Tobias Müller has worked as a scrum expert for many years and has seen how different companies have transitioned to agile. What advice does he have for managers who are thinking of implementing agile? What do they need to pay attention to?

First of all it is important to understand exactly what scrum is. The main goal of scrum is to make problems surface and then to solve them. Scrum is a process. Before scrum people had the traditional waterfall process whereby everything was defined in advance and implemented according to the plan. Scrum doesn't work like that. The whole team works in cycles and in addition to this agile techniques such as pairprogramming are used.

The Scrum Coach

Tobias Müller recommends hiring a scrum coach as a first step. This is expensive, but not as expensive as a „wrong" scrum transition. There are lots of scrum coaches on the market, so choose your scrum coach carefully and make sure that he or she can prove that they have already implemented scrum successfully somewhere.

The manager should then take a week time to sit together with the scrum coach. The main goal of this week is to find out if a transition to scum really makes sense. Managers often hear from their friends how efficient their team has become after working according to scrum, or how the competition is working with scrum and gaining more revenue. This all sounds very tempting, but each company is different and the scrum coach should assess the situation in the company concerned. For example if scrum is not supported by the Top Management, the transition will be difficult. In addition to this, managers need to realise that with scrum developers suddenly have contact with clients, is the manager ready for this? Some industries that are highly regulated are not suited for scrum or require a lot time for documenting whilst working with scrum.

Conclusion

There are some companies in Switzerland, where the scrum transition has failed. For this very reason managers should look into scrum carefully before implementing scrum. If you adapt scrum exactly according to the scrum guidelines and put the right people in the right roles, then you're heading in the right direction. Maybe the manager himself will also need a little persuasion to „let go", which will be worth it!
In an upcoming Coopers blog post we will talk to Tobias about the various different scrum training courses and find out which ones are really worth completing. So keep your eyes open for the next Coopers scrum blog post!